Attention, Parents!

Not that I think movie ratings are worth the digital bytes required to display them at the beginning of the movie, but if a movie is rated R, there is a better than even chance that it is not kid material. The odds go up considerably from there if the poster for that R-rated movie features a smiley face with a bullet hole in its forehead. There really isn't that much nuance in a brained smiley face.

I have not yet seen Watchmen. Emp. Peng. has read the book, and others we know have already seen the movie and can speak to the content. They can also speak to the fact that parents are bringing toddlers to see this movie. Now, nature has ensured that procreating isn't rocket science. The survival of any species pretty much depends on ensuring that the process of getting another generation is reasonably idiot-proof (indeed, the movie Idiocracy--another one not for kids--is a keen look at the results of the premise that the idiots are better at it). Getting a child to toddlerhood takes a little more effort, so one can assume that anyone who manages to get a child to school age has at least 6 functional synaptic connections. It shouldn't take more than that to realize that the movie with the brained smiley face poster is not appropriate for the small fry.

Watchmen is based on a graphic novel. Near as I can figure, these parents haven't paid attention to comics since Batman fought a giant telephone booth in the 1960's, and you knew they were fighting because "Pow!" "Biff!" and "Bam!" Much like how chapter books encompass both Pippi Longstocking and Lolita, there are gradients of age-appropriateness in comics and graphic novels. Parents who wouldn't assume that, because there are chapter books for kids, all chapter books are for kids, somehow are under the impression that everything in a comic format is kid-friendly. Not the case.

Most comics aren't for kids. A 1995 audience survey from DC comics found that 80% of comics readers are over 18. I doubt the percentage has dropped significantly since then. If anything, that other 20% has gotten older. There are some great comics out there that are kid friendly, just like there are movies that both kids and parents can enjoy together. However, the readership for comics is overwhelmingly grown-ups, and as a rule, grown-ups just aren't that in to the type of reading material that kids find interesting. Somewhere after the fighting telephone booth, comics grew up. They gained complex plots and characters with moral ambiguity. Some, like Watchmen, got to a level that, were it not for the art, would land them on lists of Great Literary Works. The kind of stuff that is age-appropriate for a 5-year-old just doesn't make those lists. Five-year-olds are simply not capable of processing the nuance that makes a literary work great.

They are, however, capable of processing the non-nuance of a smiley face with a bullet to the brain, even if that smiley face is a cartoon. Would that their parents were. Once and for all, format has little bearing on the age-appropriate level of the material. For example, Disney and porn companies both make direct-to-DVD movies. If anything, movies based on comic books (as opposed to comic strips like Garfield) are less likely to be kid-friendly than other movies.